Reply #24: American cars may not be crappy now, but they were for quite a while.

[Fumesucker]

My first car was a 1949 Chevy, I've had a 65 Goat, 70 Road Runner, 62 Sport Fury 'vert, 69 390
AMX and a crapload of other American cars..

But starting shortly after 1970 or so American cars took a major nosedive in quality and stayed crappy for at least a decade and actually more like two decades. I had a Chevy Monza Spyder that the interior plastic literally turned to powder and just rubbed away, I actually liked the styling of the car but it was such an ill designed and assembled bucket of nuts and bolts that it was hard to keep it running and the quality of the interior was just pathetic.

Right now I have a 97 Expedition with the 5.4 and a towing package that I use for my business which sometimes involves towing heavy loads.. Not a bad truck overall but when I pressure washed the engine compartment about 18 months ago I had to replace all eight coil packs at a cost of about $500. I've pressure washed lots of engine compartments, I do almost all my own work so I like to keep it clean but I've never once had anything like that level of failure from a Japanese car.

When you have personally owned crappy cars it's not being a dumbass to be suspicious about others from the same source.

Overcoming the bad personal experience that a lot of us older people have had with seventies and eighties and even nineties American cars is hard to do with just statistics. Once you have been thoroughly burned on a big purchase like a car it's not likely you're going to open yourself up to being burned by the same company again.